In Part 1 we talked about how to take hundreds or thousands of slides and quickly turn them into digital images. This was done by photographing the slides with a good camera and a macro lens. While you will not get as good a result as a proper scanning of the slides, you will process your slides significantly faster than if you scanned. The goal here is speed and if your setup is done properly, and you understand how to work with Lightroom, you can get OK to pretty good results.

The problem with slides is that unless you can clearly see them, it's hard to see them well enough to know which images you want to keep or toss, like, or even cherish. Simply holding them up to a light is a very limited approach. By processing the images as presented below, you will quickly convert the photos of your slides into very viable digital images. However, speed is the operative word here.

I'm presenting a lot of information below, some of which may not be relevant to you depending on your Lightroom knowledge and experience. If you're already pretty good at Lightroom, there's a lot to skim. If you're new to Lightroom, there's information below that will help you process your slides as well as any image you encounter in Lightroom. Plus, it's always easier to learn an application while doing a project that uses that application. As such, this hopefully will be a functionally useful educational experience.

Also, as I stated in Part 1, I've processed over 5000 images at this point. I've tried a variety of approaches to speed up this process and the following techniques work for me. One of the advantages of Lightroom is how many ways there are to do the same thing. I find that I use many or all of some of these approaches to get the job done. That said, I'm sure there techniques that I'm not using because either I'm not aware of them or they do not work for me. As always, YMMV (Your Mileage May Vary).

Because of my approach here, this article on how to process your photographs of your slides is also a primer on how to use Lightroom. Lightroom is a wonderful application but very confusing to use because what you are looking at can change from one moment to another depending on what mode you're in or what you've clicked on recently. Because of this I will spend a few moments at appropriate times to make sure that what you are looking at on YOUR computer is what I'm showing on my screenshots.

In this article we'll discuss:

A global view of what you're doing here

Some tips on tethering your camera to Lightroom

What you can and cannot correct on these images

Tips on selecting and de-selecting images in Lightroom

Cropping a lot of slides uniformly using Auto Sync

Some techniques to self-review your slides

Removing and/or Deleting images

Using "Previous" to duplicate a slides adjustments

Using "Copy and Paste" to duplicate a slides adjustments

Using "Sync" to duplicate a slides adjustments

Using "Painter" to duplicate a slides adjustments

Fine-tuning adjustments on your slides

Digital Dust Removal

A variety of ways to Keyword your images

Fixing misspelled keywords

Face Detection

To Begin

As stated, photographing your slides is a great opportunity to not only see your images, but to play Keep & Toss with your slides. If you have photos of nondescript mountains or nondescript people, they may have meant something at the time they were taken but now maybe not so much. You may chose to delete the photos of these slides from your hard drives or at least the image from your Lightroom collection. Because of the ability to better see your slides on your screen, what you do with these images is up to you. I will guide you on how to make these images as good as possible but you do not need to do ANYTHING from what I suggest. Just getting them into Lightroom might be sufficient. However, I found that since I can now see these images I might as well make the ones I like as good looking as possible. In addition, if there's any image that you particularly like, you can always pull out the original slide and do a proper scanning of the slide.

Just about everything that we'll be doing with Lightroom in this writing can be done with just about any version of Lightroom—you do not need the latest version. There are a few techniques that can only be done with the newer releases but these are not critical to the objective: converting vast quantities of slides into a digital format.

Part of processing the images can start as early as when you are setting up the tethering your camera and computer together. This set up can let you identify where the images will be placed in your catalog as well as start out with some keywords. [If you are not using tethering, you can do bulk Keywording during import from your camera's card as described in the Keywording section.] You can set your keywords to match the images' range you are processing. That is, if you've taken all of the images in one state (e.g., Florida), than that state can be placed in the keyword field. If in a specific location (e.g., Epcot), than I suggest you place both Florida and Epcot in the keyword list. Also note that I entered the slide box (or whatever location would suffice) that contained the slides. Again, this will help you find the slides at any future date.

You'll note that I do not have much of any custom names (for the slides) at this point. I've tried various approaches to changing the name of the slides as I processed the images but l gave up as it was tortuous—too much stopping and starting. If you really wish to provide custom names to the images after they've been photographed, there is a MUCH easier way: when looking in the images in Library mode select all of the images that will share a name. Then from the Library menu select Rename Photos... Select option "Custom Name - Sequence" from the dropdown menu, provide the custom name, verify the Start Number, and tap OK and you're done. However, I honestly never found a strong advantage of customizing the names and often left the images with whatever name they received. Simply, Keywording is much more powerful and efficient than naming the images.

As stated, the goal is to process the images as efficiently as one can. If there are individual images you wish to enhance, you can always spend time with them in Lightroom one at a time. However, any time you can alter and fix more than one image at a time, the better. Lightroom helps this considerably by providing many ways to alter many images at a time.

What you can/can't correct on these images.

These images were first slides, not digital images. Therefore, there is no lens information to take advantage of Adobe's lens corrections. And part of this is you cannot expect to get any help from the new Transform Options of selecting the "Vertical," "Horizontal," or other options to remove the perspective of an building. Fortunately, if you use the "Guided" option you can fix a distorted building, but most of the time I don't bother unless the image has some real issues and I want to take the time to fix the problem.)

Even though you've taken these as raw images (hopefully), any option to change their white balance by selecting sunlight, shade, tungsten, etc. from the White Balance dropdown menu are doomed before you start. Despite that, you can get close to fixing the White Balance by clicking on something gray-ish in the image with the White Balance Tool (or press "w"). More on this later

Another critical option that's not available is any grain correction—Photoshop and Lightroom do not know how to get rid of photographic film grain, that's a film issue, not a digital issue. If you have an image with noticeable photographic grain and you wish to fix that, your best option is to use a high-end scanning software such as SilverFast by LaserSoft Imaging. I've a sample of the benefits of this feature in the beginning of Part 1.

If you've taken your images as raw images, you will have excellent success with the Highlight and Shadow sliders. Likewise, you can control the white and black regions on the histogram with either the White and Black Sliders or by going up to the histogram, mousing down in one of the five regions (as you mouse-over each region will slightly lighten up) and dragging left or right as shown below.

Fortunately, one of the tools that IS available to enhancing the slides is the "Dehaze" tool. Unfortunately this also is a fairly new tool and is not available in earlier versions of Lightroom.

Some basic info on selecting images in Lightroom

So that you know what I'm looking at (and referring to), when I'm looking at image in the Library mode, I'm seeing the following view. Note, to get this you need to tap the Loupe View (e) seen just below the left side, below the image. I tend to not use the Grid view much (press the icon to the left of the Loupe View). However, there is one area where I do use Grid view and this will be brought up at a later time while I discuss Keywording.

Also note that the tools provided in this region can change by your choices. This is done on the far right of the tool region. If an item is checked, it will show. Also be aware that if you switch to the Grid view, the various tools change and the selections below also change. Fortunately what you chose is sticky so set it once and you are done. But again, the options for Grid and Loupe are different, it's just that once set each view's options will be sticky for that view. Anyhow, if I'm showing tools that you do not see, that's why.

Lastly, if you do not see this Tool region, press the "t" key and make it show or hide as you chose. Similarly, if you do not see the image thumbnails across the bottom, if you look at the bottom you see a small "up" pointing arrowhead as shown below. [Note: the contrast is dismal but it is there.] If the thumbnails are not showing and you mouse-over this arrowhead, the thumbnails will show, if you click on the arrowhead, the thumbnails will show and remain.

The goal in this article is to process many images as fast as possible, it's important to know how to select a single image, many sequential images and/or many non-sequential images. You might already know this material but if you are weak on these details, it will bring you up to speed on processes that will be discussed later. All of the following is done on the thumbnails that line the bottom of the screen.

Tips on Selecting and De-selecting images

If you click ON the image, that image will be selected.

If you click above or below an image, you can also select an image. Let's call this "off-image clicking."

If you click on one image and then Shift click on an image many images away, all of the continuous row of images (from beginning of the selection to end) will be selected.

And if you click on one image and Control/Command-click on any other images (regardless of order) they will be selected even if discontinuous.

Now, notice above how one of the photos in the image above is a lighter gray than the others? THAT image will show up in the big Loupe view above. If you click ON any of the selected images (not off-image), then that image will be displayed in the Loupe view. This means that if you have more than one image selected but wish to change the view of which specific image is showing, you can. If you click off-image (on any of the images), that image will be selected and all of the other images will be deselected.

If you press "Command/Control-a," all of the images will be selected. If you wish to deselect the images, you can either click any off-image clicking (and only that one image will be selected). Alternatively if you press Shift-Option-Command/Control-d, all images will be de-selected.

As you process your images, your ability to select and deselect the images is critical and the above tips will become 2nd nature in no time.

Processing the images: cropping off the slide's cardboard

As you recall in Part 1, I was very insistent upon making sure that each image was properly registered to a specific consistent location as you took the photos. The better you did this, the easier this next section will be.

Our first task is to crop the image so that none of the slide's cardboard is displayed. First, click on the Develop tab, or press Command/Control-Option-2 so that you are in the Develop tab (and not in Library mode).

The first bulk processing technique to demonstrate is "Auto-sync." I start here because this is one of the most powerful and consequently, one of the most dangerous adjustment tool in Lightroom. It's also a good place to start because it's a handy place to crop all of the images at once to remove the slide's cardboard. [Note: the way Lightroom works you cannot make any permanent changes to an image. Thus, if you crop an image in Lightroom and for whatever reason did a bad crop, you can always go back to the original image and nothing has been permanently damaged.]

Tap "Command/Control-a" to select all of the images. If you look at the bottom right of the screen you'll see a button called "Sync..." (More info on how to use Sync… a bit later.) On the left side of this you'll see a switch that's on the bottom. Tap that and it will flip to the top and now the button will say "Auto Sync." [Note, if you see nothing, than no images is selected and if the button says "Previous, that means you only have one photo selected.]

Now tap the "r" key (for cRop), select Crop from the Tools menu, or tap the Crop icon on the left of the tools (see below)

You'll now see crop lines on the image. The default crop lines are on the image's edges.

Now you need to start bringing the crop down to the image. Because this image has a bit of rotation, there's no need to try to get accurate yet. So grab a corner handle and bring it down to the image, and then repeat with the other handle on the opposite corner.

Now, if you mouse-over a corner, outside of the cropped region (see the bottom right in the image below), the cursor will turn into a double-arrow. Click on the arrow and drag up and down—this lets you rotate the image. To complete the cropping process, make any fine-tune adjustments for the sides of the crop to line up with the images' edges. Now click the Crop tool once again (or press "r" again) and everyone of your images will have been cropped all at once. Done!

While you still have all of the images selected and you're still in Auto Sync, it's a good idea to move the Highlight slider to the left and the Shadow slider to the right. If nothing else this is why you took the images in raw mode, NOT JPEG. Your ability to make as much of an enhancement to each image as you can at this point is due to the extra information contained in raw images. The exact setting is not really critical here, just close to the settings shown below will be fine. This is just a starting point for any subsequent adjustments.

Now, before you do ANYTHING else, press Shift-Option-Command/Control-d key to deselect all of the images (or click off-image on any one image to deselect all but that one image) and be sure that Auto Sync is turned off. It's important to get into the habit of this if you use Auto-Sync because if you start to make images adjustments with Auto-sync on, those adjustments will take place on ALL of your images, even the ones you just did a moment before. (And thereby undoing any fine-tuning you just did on any previous image(s)).

Initial Reviewing your Slides

Now that you can easily see your cropped images in full view in the Loupe view. Now is a great time to make sure that all images are properly cropped, which one's need to be rotated to Portrait view, and do a quick review of which images you want to spend time on and which images need to be tossed out.

The probable reality is, as you took photos of your slides, you inadvertently bump your setup and suddenly all subsequent images from that "whoops" point are not properly cropped as the previous images were. No fear. Select the first slide you notice this issue and then move over to the last slide and Shift-click on that last photo. Now go back to the first slide of this set, set "Sync..." to "Auto Sync," adjust the crop on that image. Next, be sure Auto Sync is off and deselect the images and continue. Every time you notice that things are off, do this semi-global adjustment and continue. Eventually you'll reach the end of the images and all alignment adjustments have been made.

As you look through your slides to make sure they are cropped, it is also a good time to quickly go through your slides to remove and/or delete photos that are just not worth saving. (If they are not worth saving, there's no need to spend any time correcting and/or enhancing the images.) As you progress through your images, you will find the occasional image that says nothing, means nothing, and/or isn't well taken in the first place. Time to play Keep & Toss.

You can either delete the images as you look though your images or you can mark your image so that you can "Find" the images with that marking (see next paragraph) and delete all at once. Whichever one appeals to you is fine.

In addition to deleting the images as you find them, you can be a bit more methodical and identify which images are either particularly good and/or particularly bad. This can be done by selecting an image and tapping the "P" or "X" key as you go through your images. If you look at the images below, in the upper left-hand corner you can see the white flag ("flagged") or black flag (rejected) icon identifying your choice.

Besides using the Flag and Reject, you can also use Ratings (*) and Labels (colors) to do the same thing, Flag and Rejecting are just two more ways to identify images.

The one advantage to flagging the good and bad images this way is that you've already identified which images deserve special attention. This might save you time later on.

To delete an image, select one image, several continuous images, or discontinuous images. Then, either tap the "Delete" key, go to the Photo menu and select "Remove Photo," or right click (as shown below on the left) and select "Remove Photo(s)" (if you select have two or more photos, this becomes plural). If you do any of these things, a new window pops up (shown below on the right) verifying if you want the images Removed from the catalog (but will still remain on your computer), or "Delete from Disk" which places the images in your computer's Trash Can where, if weak in heart, you can retrieve them again so long as you've not emptied your computer's trash can.

As stated, as you pan through your images it is a great time to find the portrait images you rotated to the landscape view to photograph. Here's something that's very cool: Lightroom remembers an images original orientation when making subsequent cropping operations. By this, let's say that the crops on the images were done in a side-to-side orientation. However, now that the slide has been rotated to a portrait position. If you select multiple images and make a side-to-side adjustment, all of the images that you rotated to portrait will automatically adjust in a top-to-bottom orientation. In other words, you do not need to do anything special to them after rotation, it all just works.

By the way, the process of rotating the slides is to either go to the Photo menu and select "Rotate CCW" (Command/Control-[ ) or "Rotate CW (Command/Control-] )." Because I always rotate the slide CCW when processing the slides, I always do Command/Control-] to right them again. This can also be done from the Tool menu from the Library view but the key-command is available in any mode so I tend to use that approach.

Next group process: Previous

Now we will begin to do actual image correction. This approach "Previous," and the next correction ("Copy and Paste"), are for speeding up corrections one at a time.

"Previous" is particularly good if you have multiple images that appear to need very similar correction. It doesn't make any difference if the images are near each other or not.

Below you see an image that has a color-cast and the image has had some color degradation.

I went ahead and adjust this image as well as I could in a fast fashion. (It's not a great image so I didn't spend much time on it.)

Now, I clicked on the next image

And simply tapped the Previous button

All Lightroom did here was to take the settings of the previous image and place them on the selected image. The advantage here is that this is real simple: you adjust one image and then click on any image that appears similar. (You can always go back and fine-tune any subsequent image as necessary.) So, as you look across the images in the thumbnail strip on the bottom, you can tap Previous as you continue processing. The disadvantages include that you cannot save multiple "Previous" settings (e.g., Previous A, Previous B, etc.), nor can you select multiple images and tap "Previous." In addition, if there were any corrections that were very specific (e.g., some rotation) on the initial image, those corrections will be transferred to any other image you tap "Previous" whether the subsequent images need that adjustment or not.

Next bulk process: "Copy" & "Paste."

Copy & Paste is similar to Previous but is best when you want to Paste "almost" every attribute you corrected. To use this set of tools, it requires an extra step before the Paste button.

You'll notice that the Copy button has an ellipse and that means that this will bring up a dialog box.

When this window comes up you can accept all of the boxes being checked or un-checked (lower left in the image above). As needed, you can check or recheck the options you want maintained. Notice, for example, that you can turn off rotational dynamics so they do not affect subsequent images.

To use this, you first select an image and make all of the adjustments you wish to make, then press Copy… Be sure that all of the attributes you wish to paste are selected. Then select an image and press the Paste button. All of the settings you copied will be pasted onto the new image. The advantage here is let's say that you had selected an image and made a bunch of corrections, including rotation. Assuming that you have other images that have the same problems but do not need rotation, by using Paste instead of Previous, you can pass on all of the adjustments but not rotation.

Once you've copied the alterations you've made, you can then select new image and then press Copy and repeat until you've adjusted all of the images with similar issues. What you cannot do with Paste is to select a number of images and then tap the Paste button—it doesn't work. That's when you need to use the "Sync…" feature described next.

The biggest limitation of Copy & Paste is that like Previous, you can only do it one image at-a-time.

Next bulk process: Sync…

The last option for bulk processing is the "Sync…" button (last seen when we were talking about "Auto Sync").

As before, if you select one image, this button says "Previous." If you select more than one image, the button now says "Sync…" The way to use this is to select a number of images, either continuous or discontinuous. Now click ON one of the images (not off-image because that will deselect your collection), that will be your master image for this process. Make any and all of the adjustments you want. Now tap the "Sync…" button. Up pops almost the same window as shown above. However, the button above that says "Copy" now says "Synchronize." Press the Synchronize button and you are done. This is safer than Auto Sync because you actively have to press the Sync… button each time you wish to alter a bunch of images. Sync is much faster than Copy and Paste for bulk operations because you do not have to select and then Paste on each image. Rather, you can select two or hundreds of images and boom, your done!

Fine-Tuning Adjustments on your slides

After making any bulk adjustments, you'll invariably need to do some fine-tuning on those same images. This is because it's extremely unlikely that the group of images you bulk-adjusted were exactly the same. What the bulk adjustments did was to get a group of images close to being finished, now you can finish them. Making the fine-tuning adjustments on photographs of slides is not much different from making adjustments of regular digital images but with some limitations.

As stated, depending on the age of your slides, who the manufacturer was and/or the product type, and how they were stored, the amount of degradation may be nothing or significant. It's also a sad truth that the degradation is not going to be completely consistent from one image to the next (but there will likely be groups of images that are similarly, but not uniformly degraded).

Probably the most common issue/problem is white balance caused by fading of one or more of the emulsion colors. Fortunately, using Lightroom's White Balance eyedropper (and if something in the image is probably gray), you can sneak fairly close to what the correct temperature and tint should be.

At the top of the Basic panel, next to the Temperature and Tint controls for White Balance, is an eyedropper. You can either tap on that with your mouse or press the "w" key (for "White Balance").

Now, click on something in the image that you think is probably gray. As you can see on the left image below, I've chosen the sign. I have no idea if this is true gray but it's probably good enough to get close to what a balanced White Balance should be. On the right in the image below is the instant result of clicking that eye dropper on the sign.

[Note: how does the White Balance Tool work? As you probably know, gray is an equal mix of red, blue, and green but the trick is that there must be the exact same amount of red, blue, and green. When you click on something that is (or might be) gray, Lightroom will adjust the colors in the image so that if they were not the same before, they are now. (A mid-gray is a better choice than light or dark gray.) In the image above I had nothing else better to click on so I opted to use the sign.

Occasionally there's not enough information in "white" for Lightroom to make a correction as shown in the image below. Here, the white of the jonquils was too light and I could not get sufficient information for Lightroom to work with and could not use this technique to white balance the image. (Note: if you make the image temporarily darker, this approach will still will not work.) Your only recourse here is to "eyeball" it. While challenging to do when you first start trying to white balance by eye, the good news is that the more you do the faster it gets.]

To finish up this image I noticed a tad of blue in the upper left corner meaning that even if this was Great Britain, it wasn't a completely overcast day. So I dropped the Exposure a tad, bumped up the Contrast a tad, dropped the Highlights as much as I could and pushed the Clarity up a bit. Below is the "before" these adjustments and below that is the "after" these adjustments.

[Let me repeat, if this was a JPEG, the final results would not have been as good. A raw image contains significantly more information than a JPEG.]

There will be times when the emulsions have faded to such a degree that doing a simple White Balance as above will not work. If this is so you'll probably have to manually tease the Temperature and Tint controls or in extreme condition, open the Hue, Saturation, and Luminance Panel and see if you can control the problem from here.

Below is a great example where regular white balance completely failed but making adjustments in Saturation solved the problem. In Image #1, you can see the problem. I'm in a train station and the cement floor and walls appear moss-green. They probably are not this color. So in Image #2, I try to white balance the image off of the wall and this was a failure; you can see how in the distance everything is now bluish purple. The problem is probably the light source from the ceiling is giving the area a color-cast.

So in Image #3 I go to the Hue, Saturation, and Luminance Panel and select Saturation. If you look in the right hand panel, you can see that I've circled the Targeted Adjustment Tool. If you click on that and go to a region that has color in the image, you can click and drag up and down on the image and that will increase (up) or decrease (down) the saturation. Using this approach you can see that it did a good job in removing the errant green from the cement. Obviously this will not work all the time but since cement shouldn't be green in most circumstances, here it worked fine.

If the colors are really really bad due to the degradation of the film, I'll strongly consider converting the image into a Black & White image. If that fails, it's a true tosser.

However, just keep in mind that anything you do to help the image is better than the image sitting in a box continually getting worse and worse. If the image is the only known image of Aunt Maude, you do what you can and be happy that you caught the image before it was completely totally gone.

Dust Removal

Despite dusting every slide prior to taking its photo, there will be an occasional bit of dust on the slides that will show up in the photograph. Fortunately the dust is as easy to remove in Lightroom as is sensor dust from a digital image. In image #1 below you can see the small spec of dust. [Note: The big difference between dust on a slide as opposed to dust on your sensor is that the dust on your slide will probably be sharper then sensor dust which will be fuzzy and out of focus.]

To remove the dust from the image, select the "Spot Removal" tool shown in #2 (or press the "q" key) (you can vary the size of the tool's active circle by pressing the "[" or "]" keys to encompass just the speck), and click. You will see two circles with one having an arrow pointing to the original circle. This indicates where the new fill for the spot you clicked on will come from as shown in #3. [Note: if you think there's another region in the photo that would provide a better replacement to Lightroom's initial selection, just drag this second circle to that spot. For example, if the dust is on the edge of a cloud and Lightroom selected the middle of a cloud, move the second circle to the edge of a cloud somewhere else.] Image #4 shows the results of this spot removal. If you have a hair or a long thin item you wish to remove, rather than "click" with the Spot Removal tool, simply click and drag over the errant item. Otherwise the process is just the same.]

Keywording

Like the many approaches to moving image enhancements from one image to others, there are many ways to apply keywords to one or many images.

Again, if you haven't been looking at these images in years and years and you want to see specific images in the future, you need to find them. So the last piece of the puzzle is to keyword the images.

Important: you must be in the Library tab to do Keywording. You can either click on the Library tab, press Option-Command/Control-1, or go to Window (menu) and select Library and then continue with your Keywording.

One of the advantages of Lightroom is that you can easily set keywords for single images as well as do global Keywording (apply keywords to a bunch of images at one time) and wherever you can do add Keywording, you should.

When I photograph a new set of slides into Lightroom, the Keywords I always automatically enter include: the box # (the metal or cardboard box containing the slides (you do number or mark them, don't you?)), the country, and the date (slides always have the date of processing pressed into the slide's cardboard). This date will invariably NOT be the day you took the images but it's close enough if you do not know the date otherwise. If all of the group of slides are from one state or one city, I'll enter that in at this time as well.

The very first image in this article shows where and how to automatically place keywords if you are tethering your camera to your computer. If you did not tether and will be importing the images from the camera's card. you can alternatively automatically enter the default keywords by setting up to import the images and before you tap the Import button, from the right hand side select the "Apply During Import" Panel. From there you can also set automatic Settings, Metadata, and Keywords.

At this point you need to refer back to any notes you have from your storage box or whatever else you have and go through your slides in groups to narrow down the slides to your keywords.

As you enter Keywords, you may have a group of photos that will all receive the same Keyword. You could enter the Keywords as a one-at-a-time process but that's a big time waster. Rather, you want to select a block of images and set any keywords at once whenever possible.

If you are at the first image of a set, you then need to find the last image of that set to make the group of them all selected. But, while searching for the last image of the set you've very likely will have misplaced that first one.

One way out of this problem is to mark the first image to make it easy to find. The way that I like to do this is to place a color label on the first image. After selecting that image, if you go up to the Photo menu, and select "Set Color Label," then select a color. You can also tap any of the 6 to 9 keys and get a color. Alternatively you can right-click on the image and find "Set Color Label" and set the color.

Note that the color is neither profound nor in your face. As shown below, if the image is selected, there is a thin (color) border around the image and if the image is not selected there is a (color) tint to the region around the image. Not significant, but it is something to look for as you look for that first or last image to select.

If you want to set the color so it's easier to see, you can change this by going into the View menu and select "View Options…" toward the bottom of the menu (or select Command/Control-j). Then select the Grid View (the results will show up in either view). As you can see, go to "Tint grid cells with label colors" The default is 20%, I've found that for my purposes here I like 40% or 50%. This makes it much easier to see the first in a set of images I wish to mark with specific keywords.

So, you've colored the first image, gave it a color label, found the last image, select it and backtrack to find that first image. Now you can Shift-click on the first image and they are all now selected.

Syncing Keywords

Syncing keywords is a great way to tag a number of images at the same time. The screenshot below shows the right side of Lightroom's window in Library mode and shows the Keywording Panel. You can enter multiple Keywords (place a comma between each keyword). Once you have all of your words entered as you want, and you are ready to import, press the import button.

Be aware that Lightroom tries to speed things up by doing a variety of automatic entries. For example, if you just entered the keyword piano, on the next image, when you click your cursor into this field, it will have "piano" ready to go. In addition, if you type "p," Lightroom will show that word and any other previously created keywords. So, it could display a list showing "painter," "piano,"Piccadilly." If the next letter you type is "i" than it will just show "piano" and "Piccadilly." As you continue to type, fewer options will present themselves and if the word is a new keyword, Lightroom will stop guessing waiting foryou to finish. That new word will now be a new word in the Keyword list.

Also note that there is a field just below the one shown highlighted above where you can also enter keywords. (It is hard to see that it exists because the contrast for Lightroom's fields are not very good.) The advantage of this one is if you tap the Enter key after each submission, Lightroom automatically enters a comma, ready for the next word. You can also enter multiple keywords in this field as long as you place a comma between each keyword.

Assuming you have multiple images selected, after you've entered in the Keyword(s) you want, notice that there are now two buttons on the bottom available to click on on the bottom as shown below.

On the right is one called "Sync Settings" which does the same thing as when you are in Develop mode (and let's you sync the image enhancements from the primary selected image). The "Sync" on the left which provides a whole new window shown below. The very last row in this window is for keywords. This should display all of the keywords that were entered for the primary selected image. If you want, you can enter more keywords here. The good thing here is that if there are images with unique keywords (e.g., someone's name), when you Sync the unique Keyword will not be removed. Lightroom respects these unique Keywords and leaves them alone.

At this point, be sure the check box on the left is checked, and then press "Synchronize" and those keywords are now entered for all the selected images.

By the way, if you have a group of images selected and any of them have an asterisk "*" following the keyword, that means that one or more (but not all) of the images selected have that Keyword. As shown below, not all of the selected images have the "Farmer's Market" keyword, but all of the selected images have 1984 April, Box 5, and Great Britain as keywords.

Let me show you one last way to set keywords: the Painter (aka the Spray Can). To use this you must be in the Grid view in the Library mode.

Using Painter is kind of a mash-up of "Previous," "Copy & Paste," and Sync" for enhancing the images but cooler.

Using Painter is a four-part process. Below I've found a set of images (between and including the images with the red label) that were taken in Sherwood Forest and I want to add "Nottingham" to their keywords.

Notice in Tool region there's an image of a spray paint can. If you click on this you can see the word "Paint" and a dropdown menu. From here you can see the range of stuff you can "paint" with the Painter tool. Select Keywords.

Next type in the word you wish to paint, I added "Nottingham." If you want to add more than one keyword, simply place a comma after each word (e.g., "England, Nottingham, Sherwood Forest")

Now bring your cursor (shaped like the spray paint can and seen in the top-left image) up to one of the images you wish to add "Nottingham" to the Keyword list. It's important to place your cursor ON the image, not off the image.

From here you can either simply click and/or drag on/across the images you wish to add the keyword to. This will not affect any keywords that are already assigned to the images, it only adds to the images. Also, notice the image below showing a white line around all of the images where the Painter successfully sprayed. If you inadvertently clicked or dragged over an image that should not have this keyword, simply press the Option key and re-click on that image and that (those) image(s) keywords will be removed.

Fixing misspellings

If you ever misspell or mistype a keyword, not too worry. Go to the Keyword List in the right hand Panel in Library view and find the misspelled word. Than right-click on that keyword and select "Edit Keyword Tag…" This brings up a new window where you can fix the word, click the "Save" button, and every reference to that keyword will be updated. Quick and slick.

Face Detection

Especially if you have photos of friends or family, turn on Face Detection. this is done by going up to your name in the upper left corner, clicking, and dropping down to the bottom of that menu as shown below.

Please note that this will index (and look for) faces in your entire catalog, not just any specific folder. And, if you've created a large number of photos before starting this, it will take some time for all of the images to be indexed.

Face Detection is very good for identifying full face or mostly full face images in your photos. Profiles and back of heads are not good for automatic face detection (but that doesn't prevent you from identifying who these heads are).

If you want Lightroom to point out potential faces and if you've already selected Face Detection (above), in the tool region above the thumbnails you can see a face, click on this. and Lightroom will point out what Lightroom considers a face. This is shown in the image below where Lightroom says "Draw Face Region." I should point out that in the beginning Lightroom can be howelingly wrong in determining what's a face or even the sex of people, but as you teach it faces Lightroom not only gets better at determining what in an image is a face but also becomes very good at recognizing who's who.

Also note the face image to the right of Survey View (circled in green) below, this gives you "People" (or tap "o"). If you click on that, you will get a grid of all of the faces that Lightroom thinks it sees. From there you can easily run though these images and identify who's who. AS you progress though this, Lightroom will get better and better. And for the images that are clearly not faces or people you do not care to know, simply tap the Delete key and not have to deal with them again.

The difference between having a region drawn around faces (with Draw Face Region) is that you can see the whole image and can therefore see the images in context. If you select to view the People option, all you see are faces in a grid fashion and will not have the rest of the image to put the face in context.

The advantages of facial recognition is pretty obvious: let's say your parents are having their 40th anniversary and you wish to prepare a book of their anniversaries though the years. Do a search on their name(s) and bingo, after some selection, you've got your gift.

Using keywords to find images

Although this has nothing to do with setting keywords, let me point out one of the easy ways to use keywords. Just below the keyword entry region mentioned above, look for the listing "Keyword List." In this section you will see every keyword you've assigned in alphabetical order. If the list is long you can search for specific keywords in the field at the top. [Note: I truncated this list at the purple line to show a sample and the top of the list.]

If you mouse-over the keywords, you'll see an arrow pointing to the right on the right side of that keyword. If you click on that arrow, every image that has that keyword will be there immediately. In addition, you'll see a check mark on the left side letting you know that you're seeing all of the these images. You'll also note a shaded check mark just below that for California. This lets you know that for this example Calico Ghost Town are images that are also part of the images in California.

In summary

If you've read this far, you win an ice cream cone. The amount of actual process listed above is not all that much, but I've shown a considerable amount of extra attention to what's happening within Lightroom to help as much as possible. Lightroom is a fantastic program with the one annoying aspect that items you just finished observing are now gone or different because you just tapped on something in the window. It's kind of like when you put your keys down a moment ago and now your keys are gone for good (or so it seems).

I hope you enjoy obtaining access to your slides as much as I have. It's been great seeing friends, family, and places I've been but haven't seen in many a year. It's also been very interesting to see how I've developed (or not) as a photographer in the 40+ years I've been taking photos.

This blog is divided into two parts. Part 1 is acquiring and digitizing your slides. Part 2 talks about processing the images in Lightroom to enhance the images in a fast and efficient manner and to provide keywords so that you can find the image(s) you want in an efficient manner.

I started using slides as my primary photography format around 1977. My Minolta 201 and my three lenses went to many countries and all around the United States. I photographed our family trips, my kids growing up, and my wife's and my many adventures. All told I have about 10,000 slides (really). But its been many years since I've seen these slides. They were in slide boxes and placed in the closet and the trouble of setting up the projector and screen, pulling out the slides that I wanted, mounting them into the projector to view, etc., etc. was too much work. Simply, it was as if I had never taken the photos in the first place.

I should point out that of all of the photographic mediums available, slides provide the least dynamic range. I didn't realize that when I started taking slides and I know that my photographic knowledge at the time was sufficiently limited such that if someone had told me that bit of information I wouldn't have known the significance. But that was then, this is now, and I still want to see what I photographed so many years ago.

I do own a very nice scanner and it can scan up to a dozen slides one-at-a-time sequentially but this still can take a lot of time. If you want the BEST quality images you need to do all of the adjustments with the scanning software at the time of the scan rather than later in Photoshop. If you also squeeze the largest resolution of the image (which adds to the scan time), it can take about 5 minutes per scan. With some 10,000 slides, I'd be dead before I finished.

So how good are the images when photographed?

Below are two examples of the same image. On the left is the photo version of the slide on the right is the scanned version. Besides the obvious differences such as color variations, the real limitation of the photographed version can be seen is in the facial closeup below the following image.

Here is a close up of the young woman facing us, again the photographed image is on the left. The biggest limitation of photographing your slides is that there is no way that Lightroom or Photoshop can properly deal with image grain. Digital noise, yes but not grain. However, scanning software can deal with this. For the record, I used Silverfast 8 (by Lasersoft Imaging) software on this slide and its quality is self-evident.

If your original images are mostly grain-free, you will find that the photographed images are remarkably good, but even with some grain, they are not bad as the above image testifies.

Why digitize your images

There are many reasons, probably the most important is that you've probably not seen your images in many many years. It's time to see them but there's as many reasons as there are slides.

As I pondered my options on how to do this, I had read about people photographing their slides with a macro lens but never saw a specific approach. After much research, a lot of experimentation (and solving problems as they came up), I developed an approach that lets me photograph about 30 slides in 5 minutes. In addition, with the power of Lightroom, I can process the slides from between a 20 seconds per slide (including adding keywords) up to 2 minutes per slide depending on how much time the slide deserves.

My goal here is speed: my primary objective is that I want to see my slides. If there are slides that I want the best quality for their digital format, I can always do a proper scan at a later time.

Interestingly enough, there is another benefit to digitizing your images: slides lose their quality over time. There's no doubt that the degree of degradation and the speed of this degradation depends upon the type of film used, how the slides were stored and cared for, and how old they are (to list a few of the potential reasons). Sometimes it's the luck of the draw if a group of slides has degraded over time, sometimes a whole group of slides will be pretty good yet within will be several bad ones. In addition, some film types were worse than others and were known for degradation In addition, every purchased set of slides I ever bought degraded badly. [You know, you go to some vacation spot and at the gift shop they sell a packet of slides, professionally made, and you figure, "Hey, I can't take slides inside and these professionally made slides of (say) Hampton Court will be better than what I can do." Well, after time has taken its toll, not so much.]

Below on the left is an image of a slide I took at Penn State Penitentiary and on the right a purchased slide from Hampton Court (Great Brittan). In both cases, these slides that looked fine at the time are now effectively gone.

So, in short, what this blog is all about is capturing your slides so that you have them digitized and locked in. You can always select slides that appeal to you and rescan them later to the highest quality. You can photograph these slides, look at them, shrug your shoulders and delete them all. But at a minimum you've seen them. Plus, you can now do a much better job of Keep & Toss on the images and/or the slides.

One of the side pleasures I've found as I look at these slides is how much my photography has improved and I also see where I did things correctly—even if it was inadvertent at the time!

The following is what worked for me, you obviously can vary the following as your needs and judgment feel is best. But I've photographed over 5000 slides at this point and I've already made most of the mistakes that one can do so I'm talking experience.

Preparing your slides

I'd like to say that my life is as organized as my slides and the way that I've kept them, but alas, no. For some reason I've always kept my slides well organized so that I could find things when I wanted/needed them. I'm too cheap to have purchased all of the carousels that I would have needed so from the very beginning I've stored my slides in steel Logan boxes that can hold up to 900 about slides. These boxes have 30 tabbed bins which, as you'll read, become a benefit as well. These boxes include a sheet of paper to identify what's in each bin. As I went through my slides I'd place some kind of identifying name, numbered them, and added an arrow to show what end was up. All of this identification helped immensely when it came to adding keywords. I would also take a marking pen and draw lines down slides with similar content to help see where one group started and stopped. Who knew how handy this would be years and years later.

If you haven't done all of this prep-work, I suggest sitting down during a sports game or some other mild distraction and do as much of this as you feel necessary before you begin. It will help in later steps.

Here's the equipment I used:

Some of the items in this list are not critical, others are. Again, this is what I used and perhaps you will find other items that fit your budget and/or lifestyle better.

A DSLR camera. Pretty much any kind can work here. Sorry, no phone camera or a point-and-shoot can do this.

A Macro lens, about 100mm is a good size for this type of work. The benefit here is that if you've been needing an excuse to get one, here's your excuse. I have to admit that I'm having a ball with my lens, I use it all the time in my regular photography.

A light source: What I wanted was some light source that wouldn't create a color-cast. That is, if the light source had a tungsten filament, all of the images would have a yellowish cast that would have to be dealt with. What I ended up with is "The LED Light Box" by Porta-trace. [Model #1012-1 LED] This was not cheap but it provided full even lighting with no color cast.

A Tripod. You need to affix your camera down so that it will not move, jiggle, or slide around. As one friend told me "don't buy a $20 tripod for your $1000 camera."

Painter's Blue Tape: you need to tape your light box down onto the table and you need to tape your tripod to the table that the light box is on. What's critical to this process is that every thing is ridged so that each time you place a slide down, it's registered in one place. This will become more evident and critical as you go into Part 2, Lightroom.

Dust Broom: a dust broom for slides to get the dust off. No matter how you've had them stored, the slides have dust on them and you want to get the dust off.

Slide Cleaner: If there are heavy fingerprints or other subsistences on your slides, you need something heavy duty to clean this off AND not damage the slide. At my favorite camera store I was recommended to use PEC-12 and PEC PADs for cleaning. They do a good job but you must use this in fresh air.

A long USB cable. If you chose to tether your camera to your computer, you will need a USB cable long enough to do that. My USB-3 cable is 8.5 feet long. Note: if your camera or computer does not have USB 3, depending on the storage size of your camera's images, it might not be worth tethering your camera. In addition, some cameras have built in wifi and there are 3rd party wifi options available as well.

Remote control shutter for your camera. This is not essential if your camera is tethered to your computer as Lightroom's tether controls have a shutter on your computer to press your camera's shutter. (I tie a loop on the remote shutter's cord that I let hang from one of my tripod's head's arm to make it easier to reach and grab.)

Lastly, you need to make a slide-register to place the slides on the light box. (I initially used the cardboard from a USPS Priority Mail box). If there's one negative about the light box mentioned above is that you can see some wires underneath part of the surface of the translucent cover to the light. For most purposes this is completely irrelevant but for our purpose it's not good. Locate a region where the light is not interrupted (there's lots so this is not really an issue). Now cut a rectangular hole about 1.25 x 1.5 at this location. This hole is larger than the image part of the slide but smaller than the slide itself.

Finally you need to place two extra pieces of this cardboard, offset to the rectangular hole so that the slide image can be seen through this hole. These two pieces of cardboard need to be 90°, dead on. This whole cardboard creation needs to be tapped directly onto the light box The reason for the large cardboard base is to cover the light from the light box as you only want the light projected from behind the slide.

One problem I had at the beginning was occasional dust in that hole. So I took the trouble of making the whole thing again out of sheet plastic with blue tape covering over the clear plastic. This did not solve the problem: it turns out that most of the dust came from the slide's cardboard.

Now, as stated, everything needs to be place together so that once set up, NOTHING moves. Below is an image of how I did my set up. Note that I used a coffee table to do this: this was for convenience as my desk is, well, busy. Also note that the tripod is firmly attached to the table, the light box is firmly attached to the table, and the slide-holder is firmly attached to the light box All of this is done with blue tape. The bad thing about blue tape is that it tears easy so you do have to be careful. The good thing about blue tape is that it doesn't leave a residue. [Note: the photo below makes the blue tape appear very translucent. It is not, that's just an aberration of the photograph.

Prepping the slides for photography

I like to do the photography in small groups. That is, I found that each bin in the slide box is a good block to work with. I pull out this block of slides and place them on my desk. I should note that when I place the slides into each bin, they are numbered from back to front. This was originally done so I could remove them from the box and place them in my slide projector which displayed them in order back to font. This also turned out to be a fortuitous event because what I do is to lift the top slide (which is the last one of the group), dust the slide, and place it down on the desk. I then take the next slide, dust it, and place it on top of the previous slide. Thus, once complete, the slides are now in order top to bottom. In addition, if you have any slides in the portrait position, you must rotate them so they are in same orientation as the landscape slides. This must be done because the hole in the slide mount is set for landscape viewing. When I get to processing the slides in Lightroom in Part 2, you will see that this works out VERY well. [Note: do not think that it's wise to make the hole big enough to capture both landscape and portrait because that will end up taking more time when it comes to cropping the cardboard away from the image in Part 2.]

If you are tethering, plug one end of a USB cable into your camera, the other end into either a Powered USB port or the computer. Once the camera is turned on, you can go to Lightroom, File Menu, select "Tethered Capture," and select "Start Tethered Capture..." (A window will pop up that I will discuss in Part 2.)

One note on tethering: even if the images are directly going to your computer, the images are also being placed on your camera's storage card. As such, you may need to check and make sure you've room to continue taking photos. If you do not tether, you can save your images on your camera and Import the images later. The one big advantage of tethering is that you can quickly see if you have an issue and deal with the problem. Such issue's might include something simple such as forgetting to photograph the number of the box bin or something critical such as something in your setup slipped and you're only photographing half of the slide. If the images are only collected to your camera's card, you may miss something critical and need to redo some number of your photos.

Now part of this whole process is that you will have all of your slides photographed so you can easily see them but the other part of this is that you can easily FIND them. Probably one of the biggest mistakes I made early on is to not make each bin in the slide box easily findable. Once I realized how valuable this is, I created a simple solution, embarrassingly simple: I prepared a sheet of paper with the numbers 1 – 30 printed on the sheet. I cut it in two to make it easier to maneuver on the light box and before each bin was photographed, I took a picture of that number. Then when looking over the images in Lightroom, it was VERY easy to find where the slide was in the box and since the box number is part of the keywords, I know which box.

The Photography

Finally, after procuring all of the equipment, prepping all of the slides, dusting and/or cleaning the slides, ordering and aligning the slides you can start photographing the slides.

Aim your camera at the slides and that your light box is tipped a bit so that the camera is not pointing absolutely straight down. I found that sometimes the orientation within the camera would flip from portrait to landscape and back when the lens was straight down. With the camera pointing "mostly" down, this never happened again. By eye, it's not difficult to set your camera to be in as good a perpendicular alignment as needed. If necessary, grab something perpendicular (such as a piece of paper) to hold against the light box and the lens to compare and adjust as needed. Dead on accuracy is nice, but not really critical. Nonetheless, once I had this set up correctly, whenever I broke the system down until the next time I needed it, I did not adjust the tripod head's angle—I just left that alone.

Set your f-stop at the sweet spot for your lens and set your camera on aperture priority. For my light box, I found that I got better images if I set the camera to shoot one full f-stop faster than default. I also set my ISO as low as could be, in my case that was 100 ISO. You will probably need to experiment with this to determine what works best for your setup.

As one who does a LOT of HDR photography, I tried a variety of ways to get the nuances and bring out the best of the dark and light regions of the slides. Disappointingly, all I got for my effort was to take more time and get no better an image. The best thing you can do to get the best quality of an image is to take raw images of your slides, do not take JPEGs of your slides. If a good quality image is not your goal, than by all means, go take JPEGs. But if you want to bring out the most of your images, take raw images.

Surprisingly, I got the best results by letting my camera do the focusing. The one problem with this is that you also need to use a fairly small region in the image to set the focusing point. If it's too wide your camera might focus on the cardboard of the slide, not the image. One of the problems with this approach is if the region where the camera is trying to focus has nothing to focus on (e.g., the sky or water), you can't focus. Just be aware of the problem and be prepared to change the focusing location in the image as needed.

Set the image so that you photograph will include some of the cardboard of the slide, do NOT try to perfectly get just the image. If the image is a bit tilted, again, not a big problem, this can easily be fixed in Lightroom.

So, once you got everything set, hold the stack of images in your hand, place the first slide in the register spot, take the picture, remove the slide and place on the table, take the next slide, etc. etc. etc. After each bin was photographed, I would dust the slide slot in the light box, put away that block of slides, pull out the next group, and photograph the next bin number. Then repeat.

Let me add that if you've kept the slides in their package box, you might also chose to do them one-box-at-a-time.

As far as how many bins or boxes you should do before starting the processing, again that's up to you.

I also suggest that you do one whole trip and then process those slides. This will make adding keywords a lot easier. As far as how many images I do before I called it time to take a break, that would vary anywhere from half a box to a whole box. In other words, do what works for you.

One strong suggestion for however you do this: I found that perching on a stool was great for my legs and back.

Now onto Part 2 where I talk about processing hundreds of images at a time in Lightroom.

Intro

Seven years ago I started blogging about Captivate (with version 4 - 5). Most subjects on my blog are more advanced, you'll find lot of use cases for advanced and shared actions. Meanwhile I also have spent thousands of hours on the Captivate forums and in social media, answering questions and helping to solve issues. Moreover I am busy as a Consultant and as a Trainer (for Captivate and other Adobe applications), both through live and online classes, and one-to-one. Based on the combination of those 'Captivate' experiences with my former career as college professor, I decided to write this article to line up the three most important Challenges for any Captivate developer, especially for newbies. It doesn't matter whether you are developing software simulations, soft skills training, responsive or normal projects, if you master these Captivate features you'll feel more comfortable and save a lot of time. (secretly expected Bonus: less questions on the forums ).

Imagine standing before this natural stone porch, in the middle of the most amazing desert in the world (Sahara). You got that Captivate license, but how to start, where to go?

Stumbling block 1: Timeline

Why?

Captivate's Timeline is without any doubt the first stumbling blocks for Captivate newbies. This strong conclusion is based on the many problems popping up in forums and social media, on my experiences with consultancy and while offering basic training. Captivate’s Timeline is not ‘normal if you compare with video or animation applications. It shows all objects present on the stage from the start on, not when they are scheduled., Timeline is per slide, not for the whole project. Lot of reasons to be confused. Pausing the timeline by a command or by an interactive object is THE key to building interactivity in a Captivate course which is the main reason why you will have chosen for an eLearning authoring tool instead of a video capturing tool. Understanding the Timeline and being able to control it should be the first priority of any Captivate learning (and training) process.

How do you stop this touareg caravan, walking hundreds of miles ?

Resources for Timeline

Nothing can replace a live (or virtual) training to roll away this stumbling block, but recently I published a sequence of 5 articles on my blog and in the eLearning Community to clarify this subject. Here are the links, not in the 'logical' sequence which I used for publishing, but ranked by importance:

Stumbling block 2: Quiz

Why?

Captivate quiz and score slides have pretty strict rules. A lot of functionality is built in the quizzing and score master slides, using embedded objects. The two-step Submit process, the priority of the embedded objects in the z-order, cause a lot of problems for starting Captivate users. That explains why every blog post I ever wrote about Quizzing is very popular. Most of them, even after many years, are still visited daily. The stumbling block here is for the default Quiz slides, not for custom Quiz slides are created using standard objects, widgets, variables and advanced/shared actions. Those custom question slides are challenging for intermediate/advanced users (watch out for a later blog post for those users). Drag&Drop slides, used as Question slides can be included in the starter's 'stumbling block' because they probably make a quiz more engaging for the learner.

What a relief when the car transporting our cook and all the food caught up with us after a long quest of several days! Finished that monotonous diet of dried dates.

Resources for Quiz

Some of these blog posts do need an update due to new features in most recent version(s). However most of the information is still valid

Stumbling block 3: Themes

Why?

It is one of the most hidden gems in Captivate: design of any project can be streamlined by using a custom Theme. A theme includes all object styles, master slides, skin and defaults for software simulations. Everything is based on a (custom) Theme colors palette, which can even be applied to most Learning Interactions. Creating or editing a theme before starting any project may seem a waste of time, but I guarantee that it will save a lot of time in the process. Small changes to the design, so often asked for by clients, are done in minutes. In many circumstances a well-designed theme makes a more limiting template superfluous.

The Architects/engineers of the Inca town Macchu Picchu knew very well how to prepare the 'design' of their city. Sorry for my adding the acronym TQT (Timeline, Quiz, Theme) and scribbling my name to the 'room with three windows'.

Resources for Themes

Conclusion

This is my personal view on the challenges for Captivate starting users. I am not pointing to any step-by-step work flow which may seem astonishing. My focus is on what is causing most frustrations for the so-called 'newbies', whatever their experience with other applications. As a college professor I used Flipped classes long time before the word was invented: do not spend valuable training time by explaining processes that can easily be found somewhere (videos). Students do not need a trainer for step-by-step work flows, they can lean to master them by self-study. Spend class time by taking away obstructions that are slowing down the learning process. To reach that goal I was looking for an appropriate tool and was lucky to find... Adobe Captivate!

Intro

The latest version of Captivate (10), now labeled Captivate 2017 has been released. If you did visit my blog in the past, you know that I prefer to wait a while before posting my first impressions. My focus is also more on the non-hype features added in this release, I call them the ‘hidden’ gems. Some are mentioned in the documentation, some are not. You can read here about the result of a fortnight of exploration.

1. Retina screen – software recordings

Captivate 9 was the first release which could be used on retina screens. However to record a Video Demo or a Software simulation you did have to edit the AdobeCaptivate.ini file. It was a solution, but bit cumbersome. After the capture process you had to edit that same file again to be able to use Captivate on that screen.

In Captivate 2017 this is no longer necessary, thanks to the Adobe team!

Tip: : if your OS is Win10, check the Display setting before recording (both Video Demo/Software Simulation). The OS tends to set the display setting to a percentage higher than 100%. You’ll have to reset it to 100% before the recording to avoid problems.

2. Advanced Actions enhancements

The Advanced Actions dialog box has been refurbished, and many will have emphasized that it is now easier to combine standard with conditional actions. Personally I don’t find that so important because the condition ‘IF 1 is equal to 1’ worked as well, but much more has changed. I will post an article later explaining the changes in the dialog box more in depth.

2.1 Enhancements to Decisions

The existing functionality for multiple decisions in former versions has been preserved: adding decisions, moving decisions, duplicating decisions. The buttons got another look as you can see on this screenhot. There has been added two extra time savers, if you have a lot of decisions in one advanced action:

A dropdown list showing all decisions, and allowing you to navigate and select a decision (Section 3, to the right)

A control panel to scroll to the next, previous decision, and to the Last and First decision (Section 2, to the right).

2.2 New commands

I am very happy that the commands ‘Go to Next State’ and ‘Go to Previous State’ (one of my first feature requests when multistate objects appeared) are now available in the list with commands in the Advanced Actions. In Captivate 9 there were only available as simple actions (Actions Tab dropdown list). This improves efficiency quite a lot, as you will be able to discover in the example movie (see below).

2.3 While loop

It has taken a ‘while’ but finally we have a looping functionality in Advanced actions. It is no longer needed to switch immediately to JavaScript. In combination with the command ‘Delay Next Actions…. ‘ a lot becomes easier in advanced or shared actions. Just one example: create a countdown animation by combining a counter variable, a while loop, an effect and the Delay command. While loops can be combined with standard and conditional decisions as well.

Example interactive course

First slide shows a countdown animation and a progress bar. That slide is using the new While loop. Click the Start button to see the animation. A Reset button appears at the end of the animation. Here is a screenshot of the triggered advanced action (Preview):

Second slide is using the "Go to Next State" command (new)both for text items and images (sticky character). Use the Continue button. Again, a Reset button will appear when all states have been viewed. Look at the Preview of the triggered action:

You can download the published HTML5 version from this link. Unzip the folder, and launch the index.html file.

3. Typekit integration

Finally we have access to the Typekit Library (I’m used to it using CC applications)! In the example movie I used two fonts which I already acquired with a CC subscription (Fira Sans and Rosario), but Typekit also has a free license. You have to check it out, time to get away from those limited set of websafe fonts. When publishing with Typekit fonts, you’ll need to add a domain name. For testing purposes you can choose for ‘Local host’. If you are collaborating on a project, you’ll have to be sure that the collaborators have a Typekit license as well. In that case when opening a Captivate project, Tk fonts will be synchronized on their system.

4. Responsive projects – two work flows

A lot of articles and tutorials have been published already to acclaim the use of Fluid boxes in responsive projects. However I am also happy that the ‘old’ way with Breakpoint views is still available as well. If you upgrade a responsive project from a previous version (8 or 9), it will automatically show in the Breakpoint view mode, since the development has happened in that mode. After two weeks with Fluid Boxes in CP2017 I don’t have enough experience yet to judge their full power. My first impression is that the kind of project will indicate (dictate?) the choice of the development work flow:

1. Fluid Boxes mode development will be a big timesaver for text-heavy projects. No need to check all text container styles for font sizes in all breakpoint views, no need to adapt the margins, leading to have text fitting in a text container on any mobile device. The continuous slider to see the changes for all possible browser resolutions is great! The design of a responsive theme with fluid boxes needs however a different set of mind: how to set up the grid with Fluid boxes in content master slides. The minus point of working with Fluid boxes is that you lose some control. My teacher’s experiences learned me that you cannot use the same layout on a smartphone as you use for a laptop or even a tablet screen. That will make using Fluid boxes not appropriate for all courses. If you are a die hard designer, maybe you will not like the way that objects will be handled when the browser resolution changes? Objects in a Fluid box are essentially in a 2D space: you cannot have overlapping objects. That is the reason why the Help explains that Zoom objects, Highlight Boxes and Click boxes are not allowed in a FB. Object groups, line object and mouse objects are excluded as well. However you can use them in a static Fluid box.

2. Breakpoint mode development is a lot more work, but gives you more control for layout differences between devices and for design. You can have overlapping objects, use object groups and with the exception of the Rollovers, Likert question slides, you have almost no limitations.

Tip: to switch to Breakpoint view development use this option in the Project menu

To be able to change a normal (blank) project to a responsive project is a much asked for, very useful addition. The reverse is not yet possible (responsive to non-responsive).

After some more experience with using Fluid Boxes, my opinion could change of course. Anyway I am persuaded already that the customisation of a theme withFluid boxes is more important than ever. If you wonder why, maybe have a look at this article: ‘Exploring Themes and Templates‘

More?

This personal view on some new features/enhancements in version 2017 (10 under the hood) is based on a limited time of exploration. It is not a complete list. In a future blog post (or showcase) I will give more details about using the While loop, creation of the example movie, use of fluid boxes in quizzing master slides. As promised, the overwhelming number of buttons and features in the new Advanced Actions dialog box will be the subject of another tutorial. Looking forward to your comments.

Do you have questions, use cases that you cannot figure out if they are possible? Fire away…

Save the Lady! Salem B-17 Restoration Project

Sometimes you just gotta have fun, right?

On Saturday 13 June, 2017, the B-17 Alliance hosted a War-Bird fly-in event in Salem, Oregon. This group has taken the famed B-17 bomber that “flew” over the Bomber Station on Hwy 99 in Milwaukie, Oregon for many years to a hangar at the Salem Airport. There, it’s been completely disassembled and piece by piece, they are working at not just rebuilding the plane to look at … but to fly! They even have the nose-art in a beautiful poster that they will use, as this old warbird becomes the Lacey Lady. Their website is: Save the B-17 Lacey Lady - Home

It takes a ton of cash to restore an aging plane with many parts completely missing to flying duty, so this event was a fund-raiser for this fascinating cause. I took the missus and our youngest … a 19-year old who has looked down at Dad for several years now … and we went to see the Lacey Lady and especially, the two warbirds that flew in for the event: a P-51 Mustang … and … to us the Star of the Show! … a P-38 Lightning, the twin-boom, twin-engined fighter that was the scourge of the Pacific in the last couple years of World War 11.

As this was just a fun day, the only camera gear I had with me was my Samsung S7 phone … with 3840×2160 (“4K”) video capability and stills. Setting up my pro camera, monitor, sound gear, and all that just would have made it work. The stills from the Samsung though are fine as memories, and the video can be made into rather passable memories also. Like this short clip, which shows the neutralized color blending into my WWII "Look: as the planes fly over the encampment:

But it does take a bit of doing to get from off-the-phone to the above video. I’ll walk through the process I used. And as always, my main video editing program is Adobe’s Premiere Pro, currently in the 2017 version.

Like almost all “devices” (non-camera cameras) the S7 records the video in “Variable Frame Rate” mode, where you set a frame rate which is in reality only your “ideal”, and the phone decides how many frames it actually needs to mostly sort of make that quality. I set my phone for 30 frames per second, and it delivered clips that within each clip would range from around 22fps to 31.2fps. What I typically want to edit in Adobe Premiere Pro 2017 is 29.97fps Constant Frame Rate video. So first, I copied the video to my editing computer, then batch-processed all the video media in HandBrake to CFR at 29.97fps at the original 3840×2160 frame size. In HandBrake's "video" tab, you need to check the box for "CFR" ... and set a specific number for your frame rate in the list above that box. If you allow HandBrake to set it as "auto" in Frame-rate, even though you've checked the CFR box, you get VFR clips out!

I imported that into Adobe Premiere Pro CC 2017 and set to work, trimming out the “extra” material to get down to the bits & pieces that are most interesting. The fly-by’s of the two warbirds were a joy … and as it was the first time we’ve ever seen a Lightning fly, we had no idea the sound was such a deep lustrous rumble! This image is a frame-grab from the video of the planes flying low past the encampment, fully neutralized and color-managed for good “clean” and pretty color using the steps shown below.

P-38 and P-51 Flyby at B-17 Alliance Warbirds Event

I started in the Color Workspace using the Lumetri Basic tab (on the left above) applying the same neutralization process to “normalize” the clip that I did to all the other clips. And then I did a bit of further enhancement with the Creative tab shown to the right, using the Vibrance control to increase the saturation in the areas of low color saturation.

This created the “pretty” look of the still image above, but … watching this clip several times, as the planes flew over the olive-drab of the tents and uniforms of the encampment, the clip seemed to need more of a “WWII” feel to it … or Look. Think of all the movies of WWII, so often with a muted color range towards the drab olive greens and pale yellow-green range of hues. So I set about turning this pretty full-color clip into a Vintage WWII Look. To start, I placed an “Adjustment Layer” above the clip on the timeline in Premiere Pro and selected that layer by clicking on it.

Then in the Lumetri Color panel I applied the SL Noir Tri-X “Look” in the Creative tab as shown in the image above. As you can see, the “Tri-X” look is a black and white effect, but I only wanted to take some of the color out, and to use the tonality “curve” of the old Tri-X black & white film. So I pulled the Intensity control for the “Look” down to about 70, then brought the Faded Film control up a bit just to ‘soften’ the colors & ends of the blacks & whites a bit more, and looking at the resultant image on the screen (not shown!) decided to pop the Vibrance (low saturated colors) up more and even just a bit more saturation over-all.

Then I used the Color Wheels tab to lift the Shadows brightness just a bit (the blue slider to the left of the image to the right), pull the Highlights brightness down a bit and push the Highlights color wheel towards yellow/orange a bit to complete the muted look I wanted as shown below.

After that, I used the timed Opacity settings for that Adjustment Layer so that at the beginning of the clip, the image is “normal” color and tonality, but as the planes approach the encampment, it quickly glides into the toned look I was after.

A little adjustment of sound levels made it more “live” … and then the next decision: as I’m not going to be displaying this at 4k, why not use some of those “extra pixels” and zoom in a bit as the planes approach, and even more as they fly away? Why not indeed! So as the clip progresses, the image zooms in on the planes, and then actually pans across the “original” image up and to the left a bit to keep the planes more centered as they fly off into the sky. Note from the full-color image above, how much smaller the planes are than in the video.

A few minutes of fun to watch on that Saturday, a few minutes of fun to create in Premiere Pro, and … I hope you get some moments of enjoyment watching!

“Armenian manuscript ornamentation not only occupies a large place in the nation's fine artistic culture but is also an important contribution in the treasury of international art.”from "Ornaments of Armenian Manuscripts" Publishing House "Sovetakan Grogh" Yerevan 1978

I’d like to share with you how new technologies are allowing us to investigate Armenian manuscripts more deeply. We are discovering that the vector reconstruction of Armenian Ornaments can help serve Armenian Ornaments for many generations as we can use the vector images in printing, for web and mobile apps. The vector reconstruction can help us bring back the original colors that have been lost through the ages. That why we have started a new Project “Aragil” (Aragil in Armenian means “Stork” which is a symbol of kindness).

We have found that Adobe Illustrator CC is the most valuable tool for vector reconstruction of Armenian Ornaments. There are many other vector graphic application but Adobe Illustrator CC with all other Creative Cloud app's is the one that allows to use different methods for their vector reconstruction. Also with new image technologies and intelligent scan - that have been invested with Adobe Scan now, we can obtain high quality images from old manuscripts and transfer them to vector images for further reconstruction.

We reveal the following 3 methods.

Using Pen Tool, Curvature Tool and Live Paint Tool for tracing and coloring ornaments

Using Pencil Tool, Brush Tool, Blob Brush Tool for painting ornaments

Using Shape Builder Tool for building ornaments.

Each of these methods can be used for the reconstruction of unique ornaments that fit to it. Some of the ornaments have symmetrical structure. For symmetrical symbols we use the 1st method.

But most ornaments are not symmetrical and for these kind of ornaments we use the 2nd method of reconstruction that allows to use brushes for painting with high smoothing of curves and also we use blending and transparency for achieving natural colors.

The 3rd method can be used to build the ornaments with high geometrical presentations. Obtaining less anchor points and close shapes increases the productivity of work.

For separating and catching color for each ornament we also use the “Create Object Mosaic” function in Adobe Illustrator CC that allow us to obtain all colors that must be used during our work.

There are many books and web sites where we can find how to rebuild vector images of Armenian ornaments, but most of them are wireframes and don't include colors. We find out that colonized vector reconstruction of Armenian Ornaments is a unique project.